The Wicked Go to Hell

by Frédéric Dard

  “Are we going to be eating shellfish and crabs all the time we’re here?” asked Frank.

  “Sure thing!… We’ll save the poulet chasseur for later… Seafood’s not bad. It’s got phosphorus in it.”

  They ate a rather meagre dinner, which left their stomachs unsatisfied. Frank’s wound remained unchanged. Hal cleaned it up again with whisky.

  “It’s a shame to waste good booze like that,” he said. “Still, it disinfects this nasty injury of yours.”

  Frank was depressed because he still could not see. He felt he was sinking into a black pit… It was distressing and it also hurt like blazes.

  “Buck your ideas up,” said Hal. “Lie down and try to get some shut-eye.”

  “But I’ve spent all day on my back. I don’t feel sleepy.”

  “You’ve still got a temperature. You need rest… And since you are at least able to get your head down, you might as well make the most of it. When you’re back on your feet again, we’ll leave this place one fine evening, as the tide comes in.”

  “And where’ll we go?”

  “Wherever you want.”

  They remained a moment without speaking. The crude wick gave out a ghostly light. It smoked and filled the hut with a strong smell of engine oil.

  “What was that?” Frank said, suddenly startled.

  Hal frowned and listened, affected by a general sense of unease.

  He noticed nothing unusual. He heard only the crash of the waves and the harsh cries of the birds.

  “What’s up?”

  “I thought I heard…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know… shouts…”

  “It’s only the sea and the birds,” said Hal in a neutral voice. “You’re on edge tonight, that’s what it is… You’ve got to pull yourself together!”

  “Pulling yourself together’s not easy in the dark,” grumbled Frank. “In the pitch black I have this feeling that I’m surrounded by all sorts of dangers.”

  Hal’s voice sounded hollow when he objected:

  “Mustn’t start imagining things, Frank. I’m here… and I’ve got the gun… There’s still three bullets in the spout.”

  “They’ve been in the sea,” Frank pointed out.

  “No problem… There was a tobacco pouch in this suit, it’s made of nylon… I wrapped the piece in it.”

  “Good thinking… What did you do with the tobacco that was in the pouch?”

  “I slung it. Why? Would you have wanted it?”

  “No, I don’t smoke.”

  “Nor me,” said Hal.”

  Frank got onto his knees on his seaweed bed.

  “I’m scared,” he said in a raw voice.

  “Why? I told you: I’ve got a gun!”

  “But that’s it! That’s why I’m scared.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you wanted, if you took it into your head, Hal, you could get it out and point it at me and I wouldn’t know… You could aim… You could take your time!”

  Frank’s teeth were chattering! Large beads of sweat ran down under the dressing. He was shaking.

  Hal watched him panicking in amazement.

  “Like now!” cried Frank. “This very minute! This very instant! I can feel you’re taking aim at me! Yes!” he screamed. “I can feel it. The small muzzle of the revolver, I can sense it… Don’t shoot! Please! I’m begging you!”

  “You’re crazy,” said Hal sadly.

  “Gimme your hands!…” Frank demanded. “Both of them… Now!”

  Hal reached gently for his hands. Frank felt them frantically all over, then calmed down. At length, he gave a long sigh and murmured.

  “Jeez… I was really scared!… How stupid is that?”

  “Too damn right it’s stupid!” muttered Hal. “Afraid of me!… After all I’ve done for you!”

  “I’m sorry… You have no idea what it’s like!…”

  “But I do, Frank, I really understand…”

  “You can’t,” said Frank. “You’ve got to be blind to understand… Blind! Do you think it’ll last?”

  “Of course it won’t… It’s your wound that’s festering. When we get back on dry land you’ll get yourself off to see an optician.”

  “That’s not going to happen for a while.”

  “No, but it’ll happen soon! On the whole it’s all gone pretty well up to now, except for you getting winged, so let’s just wait till the heat has died down…”

  Frank seemed calmer. But judging by the way his hands shook, Hal guessed he was shivering with fever.

  “If only I’d grabbed some of those damn pills!” he said to himself. “The last thing we want now is for septicaemia to invite itself to the picnic.”

  He wondered what he’d do if Frank’s condition worsened… Should he let him die in the hut or, instead, leave him, find a phone and raise the alarm? But they’d only make Frank better so that they could send him to the guillotine… So…

  “Is it dark outside?” asked Frank.

  “Has been for at least an hour…”

  “Have you lit the lamp?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t want it lit!” cried Frank. “I can’t stand it!”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want you to have the light on, Hal. It’s bad enough during the day. I can’t prevent you from seeing during the day, but at night… You’ve got to leave the night to me!”

  “You’re a real tyrant!” said Hal.

  “So put it out! Put it out, do you hear? Knowing there’s a light shining that I can’t see is making me ill!”

  “For Pete’s sake!” cried Hal. “What do you expect me to do in the dark? I’m not blind!”

  “We can talk,” sobbed Frank.

  Hal knew that he was dealing with the ramblings of a sick man.

  “OK, OK,” he sighed.

  He blew hard as people do when extinguishing a flame but in reality it was to fool his sick partner.

  “Is it out?” asked Frank.

  “Sure is.”

  Frank thought hard for something to say, failed and sat down on his makeshift mattress. Hal found a yellowed sheet of old newspaper on the floor and began reading it to pass the time. He was not ready for sleep and was gripped by a vague gloom which he felt like a pain inside him.

  “What are you doing?” Frank, who had been listening, asked suddenly.

  “Oh… nothing much.”

  Frank leapt to his feet. He groped his way to the table.

  “You’re making paper rustle,” he said.

  He felt Hal’s face, his hands, then the old sheet of newspaper.

  “You bastard!” he cried. “You didn’t put the lamp out! You’re reading!”

  Losing patience, Hal thumped the table with his fist.

  “That’s enough!” he shouted.

  Frank stopped yelling. He just stood, not moving, attentive and contrite.

  “You’d better be careful!” Hal went on, his anger making him stumble over his words. “Listen to me, and listen good! I’m starting to get riled!”

  Frank pleaded:

  “No! Don’t!”

  He tried to justify himself.

  “You got to understand, Hal,” he whined, “I can’t see anything!”

  Pathetically he asked:

  “What are you reading?”

  “The serial in an old newspaper that was lying around the place…”

  “Is it any good?”

  “Sensational!… Top notch!”

  “Tell me the story!” said Frank, bursting with impatience as if he were expecting some crucial revelation. “Tell me now!”

  “It’s about the daughter of this big oil tycoon who gets knocked up thanks to a criminal, as if it’s only criminals that put it about…”

  “And?”

  “She gets her maid to say the kid is hers. Problem sorted! Jeez, that must have taken a lot of dreaming up!”

  “What happens after that?”

  “
How should I know?… It’s a serial and you’ve got to wait for the next episode, like all serials. You’ll just have to work it out for yourself. You don’t need to be rich to have imagination!”

  Frank gave a thin, fearful smile indistinguishable from a sob.

  “Hal,” he said suddenly, “give me the gun.”

  “Are you off your head? You want to kill yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Then what? It’s all a blind man can do with a shooter: turn it against himself…”

  “I want it!” persisted Hal. “I’m scared.”

  “Sure,” said Hal. “And I’d be even more scared if I saw you waving it around!”

  “At least give me the bullets…”

  “If I did that, it wouldn’t be a gun any more… Suppose we got in a jam…”

  “Give me the bullets!” snivelled Frank.

  Hal sighed. His partner was being a real drag. He opened the chamber and took out the clip. With his thumb he removed two bullets.

  “Here,” he said, holding them out to Frank. “If that’s what you want…”

  Frank grabbed the two bullets the way a drug addict grabs a fix of snow.

  He felt them with his fingers, and his jaw muscles tightened.

  “You dirty son of a bitch! You’ve only given me two and a moment ago you said yourself there were three left!”

  He held out his hand. His fingers curled and uncurled greedily, clumsily. Hal stared at them and thought of the crabs he’d caught that morning.

  Angrily, he ejected the last bullet from the clip into his hand, felt the weight of it there and reluctantly thrust it hard into Frank’s palm.

  “Ah, you’re hurting me!” said Frank, wincing.

  “Yeah, and you’re hurting me too, Frank… Feel happy now, I hope?”

  “Not happy—safe.”

  “You damned!…”

  Frank held out one hand to shut him up… He twisted his head slightly and his slack mouth showed how hard he was concentrating.

  “Sh!” he said.

  “You’re completely off your rocker!” cried Hal, throwing himself face down on the bed of seaweed.

  “Shut up!…” said Frank urgently. “Can’t you hear it?”

  “Sure, I can hear a clown talking and it’s seriously pissing me off…”

  “There was someone walking about outside,” said Frank.

  He had spoken with such conviction that Hal was not able to protest with the appropriate vigour.

  “Oh,” he said after a moment, “you and your imagination!…”

  “I’m not imagining anything,” whispered Frank. “When you can’t see your ears get sharper. This time, I’m quite sure of what I’m saying… Listen… There’s somebody walking around out there…”

  Hal felt icy fingers around his throat. He suddenly felt cold and alone.

  He listened hard… and heard the mingled rumble of wind and sea.

  But there were other sounds too… There were particular sounds made by the wind. And sounds produced by the ramshackle hut.

  “You’re raving,” said Hal uncertainly.

  Hal listened again.

  Yes, he could hear it. It really did sound like footsteps. But it could not possibly have been footsteps. Silently, he repeated with savage intensity: “It can’t be! It cannot be!” But what had made the stones move?

  He had never felt so afraid in his life. He even realized that until this moment he had never felt true fear. Never!

  “Give!” he said and held out his hand to Frank.

  It was less an assertion than an order.

  “Give what?” said blind Frank.

  “The bullets! And quick about it…”

  Frank shook his head.

  “Three bullets? Come off it. What use would they be?”

  “They could make three dead bodies when pointed in the right direction,” said Hal. “So hand them back to me…”

  Instead of obeying, Frank slipped the bullets into his trouser pocket.

  “What’s the use?” he said. “If it’s the cops, we’ve had it.”

  “If it were the cops, they’d already have opened up with their sub-machine guns. This shack is just planks of wood… Do I need to draw a picture?…”

  The two men stopped talking and listened. Their whole beings became a kind of radar: they picked up many sounds, they selected some and identified them in turn…

  “Brace yourself,” said Frank.

  The footsteps had stopped outside the door.

  13

  “Maybe it isn’t a man,” Hal thought. “It could be an animal.”

  But what sort of animal would be wandering around an island not much bigger than the place de la Concorde?

  “Go on, then! Open the door!” yelped Frank, who was now at his wits’ end.

  Hal stood up, hesitated, picked up the empty revolver by the barrel and walked to the door. All that could be heard now was the sound of the sea and the wind. He reached for the small metal bar which served as a latch, lifted it and pulled. The wind swept yowling into the hut.

  Hal stood where he was, petrified by surprise. He was not afraid now but what he felt was just as strong. Standing in the doorway was a woman. And it was the woman from two nights before.

  For one brief moment, it was as if the universe had neither frontiers nor reality. He stared at the blonde young woman. But she no longer had the strength to return his look. She staggered. Only then did he notice that her clothes—shorts and a woman’s striped marinière—were torn and dripping with sea water.

  The woman rested her forehead on the frame of the door. Her streaming wet hair hung down over her face.

  “I must be dreaming…” thought Hal. “This can’t be happening…”

  Frank’s anguished voice snapped him out of the state of uncertainty which had suddenly made his mind go blank.

  “What’s happening, Hal?… Tell me!… Hal, are you there?”

  Getting no reply, Frank was starting to panic again.

  “Answer, for God’s sake! Hal! What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got a visitor,” said Hal.

  “A visitor!” cried Frank. “What are you talking about? Tell me!”

  The sound of his own voice was reassuring.

  The blonde woman attempted to enter. She swayed and collapsed into Hal’s arms.

  He helped her into the hut and then kicked the door shut behind them. He took hold of her by the waist and laid her down on the table. Gently he teased the hair off her face, which was unnaturally pale. It was indeed the same woman who had come to their rescue the night before last.

  “Yes,” repeated Hal gravely, “a visitor… who comes by night, when the last hand is dealt… but whether she’s the queen of hearts… or spades, we’ll have to wait and see…”

  “A woman?” said Frank, sitting up.

  “Better: a pretty woman.”

  “Impossible!”

  Frank sprang towards the table and almost went sprawling because the bench was in his way. Feverishly, he ran his hands over the unconscious woman.

  “But it’s true!” he said. “True! What’s she playing at here, Hal?”

  “She’s playing dead,” said Hal, uncorking the whisky bottle.

  “Is she really dead?”

  “No way! Women are tougher than that! She must have been out sailing hereabouts and her boat capsized. But guess who she is?”

  Frank did not understand the question.

  “How should I know?” he said.

  “It’s not so long ago that you were talking to her.”

  “Huh?”

  Frank gave a start.

  “It’s that chick from the other day!”

  “Ten out of ten!” said Hal as he pushed the neck of the bottle through the blonde woman’s teeth.

  “What are you doing to her?”

  “Rendering unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar…”

  He stopped speaking, for the woman had just opened her eyes and was murm
uring something.

  “What did she say?” asked Frank, jostling his partner.

  “That it’s awful.”

  “What’s awful?”

  “If you’d let her speak perhaps we’ll find out.”

  Hal went on: “Here, give me a hand; we’ll lay her on the ground—she’ll be more comfortable, and so will we… It’s unnerving to see a woman laid out on a table.”

  Frank felt around then gripped their visitor by the legs.

  “Mind the bench!” said Hal. “That’s it, one more step to the left!… Perfect… Now put her down.”

  He knelt down beside their recently arrived guest.

  “Of all the!…” said Frank.

  “Yeah. This is some coincidence!”

  “Coincidence—you said it,” echoed Frank.

  He gave a laugh.

  The woman looked up at them and in her still-uncertain eyes there was a degree of disbelief which equalled that of the two men.

  “Evening,” said Hal. “Well, well… Who’d have thought you’d miss us so much? You must have second sight…”

  He stopped, for she was crying.

  “Spare us the waterworks!”

  “Leave her!” said Frank.

  Hal smiled. The woman shrank back against the wall of the hut.

  “You!” she said.

  “Cut it out!” growled Frank. “Stop the play-acting and just tell us how you got here.”

  “I was out sailing with my husband… We went a long way out to sea, this afternoon. As we were coming back there was a sudden strong gust of wind and the boat was blown flat on its side. I was thrown into the sea…”

  She stopped and put one hand over her eyes.

  “Then what happened?” persisted Frank.

  “I went under, my husband dived in, helped me back to the boat and told me to hang on to the hull. He tried to right the boat but couldn’t manage it and then suddenly he just went straight down before my very eyes!…”

  “RIP,” murmured Hal.

  “Shut your trap!” snapped Frank. “What happened then?”

  “I clung on to the boat for as long as I could. I hoped the tide would carry the wreckage back to the coast but the opposite happened. The wind started blowing me out to sea. I knew I’d die unless I did something! Then, as it grew dark, I made out this island… Far, far away… I’m not a strong swimmer, but I decided to risk it.”